Hydroelectric Energy
What is Hydroelectric energy?
Hydroelectric is a form of energy it is a renewable resource. Hydroelectricity is the most important and widely used renewable source of energy. Hydroelectric relies on water, which is clean and renewable energy source. Renewable energy comes from natural resources. Non-Renewable energy source includes coal, oil and natural gas. Water is renewable because water continually recycles itself. To harness energy from flowing water, the water must be controlled; a large reservoir is created, usually by damming a river to create an artificial lake or reservoir. Water is channeled through tunnels in the dam. The energy of water flowing through the dam causes the turbines to turn and make the generators move which will produce electricity. Hydro power is the process of changing the kinetic energy of flowing water in a river into electrical power. Hydroelectricity comes from a Greek word for water. Hydroelectric power provides 96% of the renewable energy in the United States. Hydroelectric power plants do not use up resources to create electricity neither do they pollute anything. Although fossil fuels and nuclear power plants produce most of the energy in the United States, hydroelectricity provides 7 percent of total power. Hydroelectric power comes from flowing water runoff from lakes etc. The most common type of hydroelectric power plant is a dam on a river to store water in a reservoir. Hydroelectric energy has been in use for thousands of years and is one of the oldest methods of producing energy. Ancient Egyptians used it to grind grain as early 250 B.C. The first US hydroelectric power plant was built on the Fox River 1882 in Appleton, Wisconsin. The largest hydroelectricity powe...
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...affect river ecosystems. Flooding a lot of areas and land that are natural environment is destroyed. High investment costs. It can destroy animal habitats. Hydroelectric power stations can cause major problems. At times small pieces of earth get trapped at the bottom of still water in the reservoir. Building dams can also affect crops in the neighboring areas. Large dams are really expensive to build. Water moving over a damn can pick up nitrogen, causing fish to die downstream. Large hydroelectric dams can only be build in limited number of areas/places with large amounts of water.
Aldo Robles
http://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/pamphlet.pdf
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/hydroelectric-energy/?ar_a=1
http://www.tvakids.com/electricity/hydro.htm
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wuhy.html
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/hyhowworks.html
The article “Hydropower as a Renewable Energy Source” (n.d.) shows that man-made dams make up seventy-five percent of the United States’ total renewable energy.
In the beginning of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, there were several problems. There were several protestors and opinions about the dam before the Three Gorges Dam project was even started.1 China has had history of several dam failures in the mid-1970s that were responsible for thousands of deaths. The three gorges (Xiling, Wu, and Qutang) have scenery that is a tourist attraction.2 The dam was going to be a little over 600 feet tall, 7500 feet wide, and hold over 97 trillion gallons of water. Because of all of the population increase, China started using coal power plants1 and shipping, which causes acid rain over the region making the Yangtze River is one of the most polluted rivers in the world.4 It does not help that the Yangtze River runs right through Chinas industrial heartland. Using the river to transport their goods to other parts or China adds to the pollution.2 Pollution from mines, hospitals, and garbage dumping is another big problem for the river because the pollution is building up around the dam.1 With the Three Gorges Dam will come landslides because of the rising water tables and the large slopes with unstable soil from local farming causing more sediment being added to the river.3 And because the dam lies on a fault line there will also be an escalation of earthquakes. There is a huge decrease in sediment discharge; which caused a 90% sediment load into thousands of other reservoirs. Before the dam was operational, it was retaining water and sediments.4 The water levels were rising faster than anyone expected, therefore, the finish date had to be moved up.1 Scientists even projected that 70% of sediment discharge would be trapped for the first two decades and 44% would be store...
The use of turbines from dams to provide power was a brilliant idea until water levels started running lower than normal. The water waste from humanity is directly contributing to portions of it, aside from drought conditions affected by pollution, widespread fires battled, and more adds to the depletion thereof. When humanity is relying on power provided from dams to handle the demand, they are essentially relying on the assumption that water levels will always be there to provide it. The Hoover Dam provides power to the southwestern portion of the USA that has a large number of people.
Rivers all over the United States create geological features that fascinate many people, whether it is for work or for play. Rivers also pose a threat to many towns every year as spring rains and snow melt fill these rivers to beyond capacity, causing them to overflow their banks; flooding the surrounding areas. Rivers may cause floods, however, they also provide many benefits to society. One of the most notable is hydroelectric power, which often leads to a river being dammed. A dammed river creates a reliable location for adventure companies to establish whitewater rafting businesses that utilizes the flow of the river through rapids and scenic views to create a thrill for adventure seeking customers.
When it floods sediments can affect the land by losing nutrients in the soil and it can also affect the clarity of
Hydro power is one of many examples of alternative energy sources. Hydro power produces energy by moving water. Wind power is another form of solar power. Wind isn’t only a clean fuel source, but it is one of the most inexpensive alternative sources of energy.
Next, hydro-electricity is electricity produced by moving water, flowing past a turbine connected to a generator (“Hydropower”). According to Nationalgeographic.c...
Animals living environment may be injured by hydroelectricity dams. The completion of the hydroelectric dam or reservoir may will cause a large number of wild animals and plants are drawing to death or even become extinct in the future. For terrestrial creatures, effects
Below I will list a table with the pros and cons of renewable energy as it is the biggest solution to the huge issue of overusing electricity. Next I will be discussing what we a society can do to further improve this situation and my main point lies within hydropower. Hydropower is the renewable energy contained in flowing water. Electricity is generated using hydropower known as hydroelectricity and is generally considered to be reliable.20% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2006 was generated with hydroelectricity (generating electricity from hydropower), the most used renewable energy source in the world. We all know that hydroelectricity is both renewable and green, but what are the other advantages this technology offer? Are there any disadvantages? Look below at figure 2 to see the pros and cons of hydropower. There are many changes to be made whether it be in a single home or as a community, we may face obstacles but that is what it is all about, we have the resource to use all we need to do is use them in the write up above I've listed problems that lie within my home as well as solutions we have done to fix the mistakes we made. I hope you enjoyed and learned a bit about resources and how to use them with all the effort
The first type of renewable energy is hydroelectric energy or well known as hydropower. In greek word, hydro means water and thus hydroelectric energy refers to electricity generated using flowing water at high velocity. Lutgens and Tarbuck (1992, p. 163) stated that “running water is of great importance to people as we depend upon rivers for energy, travel and irrigation”. Continuous availability of water in universe made water to be the main source of hydroelectric energy. Water has been widely utilized by mankind since the beginning of civilization and wate...
The most significant function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem of a seasonal river like the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, and many large and important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai lie next to the river. Plenty of farm land and the most important industrial area of China are built beside the river.
Water shortage affects the agricultural sector, so as a consequence the price of production increases. The water crisis affects the economy and health of the population, so people need to understand that water is a priority to life.
How exactly does hydropower work, though? As it turns out, dams are the main source of harvesting energy via hydropower. There are about 80,000 dams in the United States, although not all are active producers of power. There are four main types of hydropower facilities, which all require turbines: impoundment, diversion, run-of-river, and pumped storage. Also, there are two main types of hydro turbines: impulse turbines and reaction turbines ("Hydropower…”).
The paragraphs below will prove that the construction and presence of dams always has and will continue to leave devastating effects on the environment around them. Firstly, to understand the thesis people must know what dams are. A dam is a barrier built across a water course to hold back or control water flow. Dams are classified as either storage, diversion or detention. As you could probably notice from it's name, storage dams are created to collect or hold water for periods of time when there is a surplus supply.
The High Dam which is the greatest project built in the modern era, there are a lot of advantage like avoid the towns from the floods which happening in the past ever yea...